AS THE BIOLOGIST SEES IT 



human life, and yet must guard ourselves 

 against the assumption that because we 

 understand the life of starfishes pretty 

 well we are sufficiently equipped with 

 knowledge to be confident of explaining 

 human life in terms of magnified starfish 

 life. Even if I can declare with almost 

 perfect certainty what will be the color 

 of the eyes of the children of two blue- 

 eyed parents, and with much confidence 

 what kind of mental equipment the 

 children of two congenitally feeble-minded 

 parents will have, because I am familiar 

 with a biological law discovered by a 

 naturalist who studied heredity in garden 

 peas, and because I have noted that this 

 law applies equally well to certain silk- 

 worm characters and, finally, to various 

 human traits, I am in no position to say 

 whether your children will believe in God 

 or not, be Republicans or Democrats or 

 Bolshevists, write poetry, or rob banks, 

 or live in settlement houses. I may be 

 able to make a fair prognosis of the de- 

 gree of resistance to tuberculosis which 

 43 



